I went to lunch the other day with a friend of mind and started telling her about the game my wife and I had tried out (and rather enjoyed) the other night. Mind you, my friend is a gamer and often comes over for rounds of Shadows over Camelot, Princes of Florence or what have you. Despite this I got a really strange look when I started out with...

"So you've got this coral and it's growing and eating other coral and you send out your shrimpers to guard it so you can feed your fish!"

She just looked at me like I was on crack.

Kudos to Reef Encounter for making me look like a weird even to another gamer geek!

I was at an "extended family" dinner, we're talking about 20+ people all eating at the same table. It was like that "Big Fat Greek Wedding" movie, but all shouting things in spanish. One of my cousins, my brother and I play mostly every friday, so they were talking to one of my out-of-town aunts about one of my cousins (her son). That kid is as smart as they come, he gets tired of "dry puzzles" and always is in the look of that "something else", so my brother says that a lot of the games we play are "thinking" games, far from "snakes and ladders". He tells her that I have "that Power Grid game", and I briefly try to explain it: "You're an 'electricity supplier' trying to efficiently supply the most cities you can".

My aunt gave me a look of "stay away from my kids, geektard", and quickly changed the subject...